Ian kershaw hitler (v5 0)

Hitler’s study in the Reich Chancellery Bibliothek für Zeitgeschichte, Stuttgart 79.. Hitler visiting the Maginot Line in Alsace, 1940 Bibliothek für Zeitgeschichte, Stuttgart 91.. Hitle

PENGUIN BOOKSHITLER

IAN KERSHAW is Professor of Modern History at the University of Sheffield For services tohistory he was given the German award of the Federal Cross of Merit in 1994 He wasknighted in 2002 and awarded the Norton Medlicott Medal by the Historical Association

in 2004

He was the historical adviser to three BBC series: The Nazis: A Warning from History, War

of the Century and Auschwitz.

His most recent books are Hitler 1889–1936: Hubris and Hitler 1936–1945: Nemesis, which

received the Wolfson Literary Award for History and the Bruno Kreisky Prize in Austriafor the Political Book of the Year, and was joint winner of the inaugrual British

Academy Book Prize; Making Friends with Hitler: Lord Londonderry and Britain’s Road to

War, which won the Elizabeth Longford Prize for Historical Biography in 2005; and

Fateful Choices: Ten Decisions that Changed the World, 1940–41.

IAN KERSHAW

Hitler

PENGUIN BOOKS

PENGUIN BOOKS Published by the Penguin Group Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL , England Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, USA Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M4P 2Y3 (a division of Pearson

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Hitler, 1889–1936: Hubris first published 1998 Hitler, 1936–1945: Nemesis first published 2000

This one-volume abridgement with a new Preface first published by Allen Lane 2008

Published in Penguin Books 2009 Copyright © Ian Kershaw, 1998, 2000, 2008

All rights reserved The moral right of the author has been asserted Except in the United States of America, this book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding

or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed

on the subsequent purchaser ISBN: 978-0-14-190959-2

3 Elation and Embitterment

4 The Beerhall Agitator

5 The ‘Drummer’

6 Emergence of the Leader

7 Mastery over the Movement

8 Breakthrough

9 Levered into Power

10 The Making of the Dictator

11 Securing Total Power

12 Working Towards the Führer

13 Ceaseless Radicalization

14 The Drive for Expansion

15 Marks of a Genocidal Mentality

16 Going for Broke

17 Licensing Barbarism

18 Zenith of Power

19 Designing a ‘War of Annihilation’

20 Showdown

21 Fulfilling the ‘Prophecy’

22 Last Big Throw of the Dice

23 Beleaguered

24 Hoping for Miracles

25 Luck of the Devil

26 No Way Out

27 Into the Abyss

28 Extinction

Main Published Primary Sources on Hitler Index

List of Illustrations

Every effort has been made to contact all copyright holders The publishers will be glad

to make good in future editions any errors or omissions brought to their attention

(Photographic acknowledgements are given in brackets.)

1 Adolf Hitler in his Leonding school photo (Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Munich)

2 Klara Hitler (Ullstein Bilderdienst, Berlin)

3 Alois Hitler (Ullstein Bilderdienst, Berlin)

4 Karl Lueger (Hulton Getty, London)

5 August Kubizek (The Wiener Library, London)

6 The crowd in Odeonsplatz, Munich, 2 August 1914 (Bayerische Staatsbibliothek,Munich)

7 Hitler with Ernst Schmidt and Anton Bachmann (Bildarchiv Preußischer Kulturbesitz,Berlin)

8 German soldiers on the Western Front (Hulton Getty, London)

9 Armed members of the KPD Sektion Neuhausen (Bayerische Staatsbibliothek,

Munich)

10 Counter-revolutionary Freikorps troops entering Munich (Bayerische

Staatsbibliothek, Munich)

11 Anton Drexler (Hulton Getty, London)

12 Ernst Röhm (Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Munich)

13 Hitler’s DAP membership card (Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Munich)

14 Hitler speaking on the Marsfeld (Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Munich)

15 NSDAP mass meeting, Munich, 1923 (Collection Rudolf Herz, Munich)

16 Paramilitary organizations on ‘German Day’, 1923 (Collection Rudolf Herz,

Munich)

17 Alfred Rosenberg, Hitler, Friedrich Weber and Christian Weber (Bildarchiv

Preußischer Kulturbesitz, Berlin)

18 Armed SA men manning a barricade (Süddeutscher Verlag, Munich)

19 Armed putschists from the area around Munich (Stadtsmuseum, LandeshaupstadtMunich)

20 Defendants at the trial of the putschists (Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Munich)

21 Hitler immediately after his release from imprisonment (Bayerische

Staatsbibliothek, Munich)

22 Hitler in Landsberg (Bibliothek für Zeitgeschichte, Stuttgart)

23 Hitler in Bavarian costume (Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Munich)

24 Hitler in a raincoat (Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Munich)

25 Hitler with his alsatian, Wolf (Collection Rudolf Herz, Munich)

26 The Party Rally, Weimar, July 1926 (Ullstein Bilderdienst, Berlin)

27 The Party Rally, Nuremberg, August 1927 (Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Munich)

28 Hitler in SA uniform (Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Munich)

29 Hitler in rhetorical pose (Karl Stehle, Munich)

30 Hitler speaking to the NSDAP leadership (Bildarchiv Preußischer Kulturbesitz,Berlin)

31 Geli Raubal and Hitler (David Gainsborough Roberts)

32 Eva Braun (Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Munich)

33 Reich President Paul von Hindenburg (AKG London)

34 Reich Chancellor Heinrich Brüning with Benito Mussolini (AKG London)

35 Reich Chancellor Franz von Papen with State Secretary Dr Otto Meissner

(Bundesarchiv, Koblenz)

36 Gregor Strasser and Joseph Goebbels (Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Munich)

37 Ernst Thälmann (Hulton Getty, London)

38 Nazi election poster, 1932 (AKG London)

39 Candidate placards for the presidential election (Bundesarchiv, Koblenz)

40 Discussion at Neudeck (AKG London)

41 Reich Chancellor Kurt von Schleicher (AKG London)

42 Hitler in evening dress (Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Munich)

43 Hitler bows to Reich President von Hindenburg (AKG London)

44 SA violence against Communists (AKG London)

45 The boycott of Jewish doctors (AKG London)

46 An elderly Jew being taken into custody (AKG London)

47 Hindenburg and Hitler on the ‘Day of National Labour’ (AKG London)

48 Hitler with Ernst Röhm (Süddeutscher Verlag, Munich)

49 Postcard designed by Hans von Norden (Karl Stehle, Munich)

50 Postcard: ‘The Führer as animal-lover’ (Karl Stehle, Munich)

51 Hitler justifying the ‘Röhm purge’ (Bildarchiv Preußischer Kulturbesitz, Berlin)

52 Hitler, Professor Leonhard Gall, and architect Albert Speer (Bayerische

Staatsbibliothek, Munich)

53 Hitler with young Bavarians (Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Munich)

54 The Mercedes-Benz showroom at Lenbachplatz, Munich (Stadt-archiv,

Staatsbibliothek, Munich)

57 New recruits at the Feldherrnhalle, 1935 (Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Munich)

58 German troops entering the Rhineland (AKG London)

59 Adolf Hitler, September 1936 (Ullstein Bilderdienst, Berlin)

60 Hitler discussing plans for Weimar, 1936 (Corbis/Hulton-Deutsch Collection)

61 The Berlin Olympics, 1936 (Ullstein Bilderdienst, Berlin)

62 Hitler meets the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, 1937 (Corbis/ Hulton-Deutsch

Collection)

63 Werner von Blomberg (Corbis/Hulton-Deutsch Collection)

64 Werner von Fritsch (Bibliothek für Zeitgeschichte, Stuttgart)

65 Hitler addresses crowds in the Heldenplatz, Vienna, 1938 (AKG London)

66 Hitler, Mussolini and Victor-Emmanuel III, 1938 (Bibliothek für Zeitgeschichte,Stuttgart)

67 Hitler in Florence, 1938 (Bibliothek für Zeitgeschichte, Stuttgart)

68 ‘The Eternal Jew’ exhibition, Munich, 1937 (AKG London)

69 ‘Jews in Berlin’ poster, Berlin, 1938 (Corbis/Bettmann)

70 Synagogue on fire, Berlin, 1938 (Corbis/Hulton-Deutsch Collection)

71 Jewish Community building, Kassel, 1938 (Ullstein Bilderdienst, Berlin)

72 Looted Jewish shop, Berlin, 1938 (AKG London)

73 Joseph Goebbels and his family, 1936 (Corbis/Hulton-Deutsch Collection)

74 Goebbels broadcasting to the people, 1939 (Hulton Getty)

75 Eva Braun, c.1938 (Hulton Getty)

76 Wilhelm Keitel greets Neville Chamberlain (Bibliothek für Zeitgeschichte, Stuttgart)

77 German troops, Prague, 1939 (Bibliothek fur Zeitgeschichte, Stuttgart)

78 Hitler’s study in the Reich Chancellery (Bibliothek für Zeitgeschichte, Stuttgart)

79 Göring addresses Hitler in the New Reich Chancellery, 1939 (Bayerisches

Hauptstaatsarchiv, Munich)

80 Hitler presented with a model by Ferdinand Porsche, 1938 (Hulton Getty)

81 Heinrich Himmler presents Hitler with a painting by Menzel, 1939 (Bundesarchiv,Koblenz)

82 Hitler with Winifred Wagner, Bayreuth, 1939 (Bayerisches Hauptstaatsarchiv,

85 Hitler reviewing troops in Warsaw, 1939 (Bibliothek für Zeitgeschichte, Stuttgart)

86 Hitler addresses the Party’s ‘Old Guard’ at the Bürgerbräukeller, Munich, 1939

(Bibliothek für Zeitgeschichte, Stuttgart)

87 Arthur Greiser (Bundesarchiv, Koblenz)

88 Albert Forster (Süddeutscher Verlag, Munich)

89 Hitler reacting to news of France’s request for an armistice, 1940 (Bibliothek fürZeitgeschichte, Stuttgart)

90 Hitler visiting the Maginot Line in Alsace, 1940 (Bibliothek für Zeitgeschichte,

Stuttgart)

91 Hitler in Freudenstadt, 1940 (Bibliothek für Zeitgeschichte, Stuttgart)

92 Crowds in the Wilhelmplatz, Berlin, 1940 (Bibliothek fur Zeitgeschichte, Stuttgart)

93 Hitler bids farewell to Franco, Hendaye, 1940 (Ullstein Bilderdienst, Berlin)

94 Hitler meets Marshal Pétain, 1940 (Bibliothek für Zeitgeschichte, Stuttgart)

95 Ribbentrop talking to Molotov, Berlin, 1940 (Bildarchiv Preußischer Kulturbesitz,Berlin)

96 Hitler meets Matsuoka of Japan, 1941 (Bibliothek für Zeitgeschichte, Stuttgart)

97 Hitler talks to Alfred Jodl, 1941 (Bibliothek für Zeitgeschichte, Stuttgart)

98 Hitler and Keitel, en route to Angerburg, 1941 (Ullstein Bilderdienst, Berlin/Walter

Frentz)

99 ‘Europe’s Victory is Your Prosperity’, anti-Bolshevik poster (Imperial War Museum,London)

100 Walther von Brauchitsch and Franz Halder (AKG London)

101 Keitel with Hitler at the Wolf’s Lair (Bibliothek für Zeitgeschichte, Stuttgart)

102 Himmler and Reinhard Heydrich (Süddeutscher Verlag, Munich)

103 Nazi propaganda poster featuring Hitler’s ‘prophecy’ of 30 January 1939 (TheWiener Library, London)

104 Hitler salutes the coffin of Heydrich, 1942 (Bibliothek für Zeitgeschichte, Stuttgart)

105 Hitler comforts Heydrich’s sons (Bibliothek für Zeitgeschichte, Stuttgart)

106 Hitler addresses 12,000 officers at the Sportpalast, Berlin, 1942 (Bibliothek fürZeitgeschichte, Stuttgart)

107 The officers reacting (Bibliothek für Zeitgeschichte, Stuttgart)

108 Fedor von Bock (Ullstein Bilderdienst, Berlin/Walter Frentz)

109 Erich von Manstein (Ullstein Bilderdienst, Berlin/Walter Frentz)

110 Hitler speaks at ‘Heroes’ Memorial Day’ at the Armoury on Unter den Linden,

Berlin, 1942 (Bibliothek für Zeitgeschichte, Stuttgart)

111 Motorized troops pass a burning Russian village on the Eastern Front, 1942

(Hulton Getty)

112 Hitler greets Dr Ante Pavelic, 1943 (Bibliothek für Zeitgeschichte, Stuttgart)

113 Hitler with Marshal Antonescu, 1942 (Bibliothek für Zeitgeschichte, Stuttgart)

114 Hitler greets King Boris III, 1942 (Bibliothek für Zeitgeschichte, Stuttgart)

115 Hitler greets Monsignor Dr Josef Tiso, 1943 (Bibliothek für Zeitgeschichte,

Stuttgart)

116 Hitler greets Marshal Mannerheim, 1942 (Bibliothek für Zeitgeschichte, Stuttgart)

117 Admiral Horthy speaks with Ribbentrop, Keitel and Martin Bormann (Bibliothek fürZeitgeschichte, Stuttgart)

118 A ‘Do 24’ seaplane, Norway (Bibliothek für Zeitgeschichte, Stuttgart)

119 Train-mounted cannon, Leningrad (Bibliothek für Zeitgeschichte, Stuttgart)

120 German tanks, Cyrenaica, Libya (Hulton Getty)

121 Hunting partisans, Bosnia (Bibliothek für Zeitgeschichte, Stuttgart)

122 Exhausted German soldier, the Eastern Front (Bibliothek für Zeitgeschichte,

125 Martin Bormann (Hulton Getty)

126 Hitler and Goebbels on the Obersalzberg, 1943 (Ullstein Bilderdienst, Berlin/WalterFrentz)

127 German soldiers pushing vehicle through mud, the Eastern Front (Corbis)

128 Armoured vehicles lodged in snow, the Eastern Front (Bibliothek für Zeitgeschichte,Stuttgart)

129 Waffen-SS troops, the Eastern Front (Bibliothek für Zeitgeschichte, Stuttgart)

130 French Jews being deported, 1942 (Bildarchiv Preußischer Kulturbesitz, Berlin)

131 Polish Jews dig their own grave, 1942 (Bildarchiv Preußischer Kulturbesitz, Berlin)

132 Incinerators at Majdanek, 1944 (Ullstein Bilderdienst, Berlin)

133 Hitler and Himmler walking on the Obersalzberg, 1944 (Ullstein Bilderdienst,

Berlin/Walter Frentz)

134 The ‘White Rose’, 1942 (Gedenkstätte Deutscher Widerstand, Berlin)

135 Heinz Guderian (Hulton Getty)

136 Ludwig Beck (AKG London)

137 Claus Schenk Graf von Stauffenberg (AKG London)

138 Henning von Tresckow (Süddeutscher Verlag, Munich)

139 Hitler just after the assassination attempt, 1944 (Süddeutscher Verlag, Munich)

140 Hitler’s trousers (Bibliothek für Zeitgeschichte, Stuttgart)

141 Last meeting of Hitler and Mussolini, 1944 (Bibliothek für Zeitgeschichte, Stuttgart)

142 Karl Dönitz professes the loyalty of the Navy, 1944 (Bibliothek für Zeitgeschichte,Stuttgart)

143 An ageing Hitler at the Berghof, 1944 (Ullstein Bilderdienst, Berlin/ Walter Frentz)

144 V1 flying-bomb (Bibliothek für Zeitgeschichte, Stuttgart)

145 V2 rocket (Corbis/Hulton-Deutsch Collection)

146 Messerschmitt Me262 (Hulton Getty)

147 The ‘Volkssturm’, 1944 (Hulton Getty)

148 The last ‘Heroes’ Memorial Day’, Berlin, 1945 (Bibliothek für Zeitgeschichte,Stuttgart)

149 Women and children fleeing Danzig, 1945 (AKG London)

150 Hitler views a model of Linz (National Archives and Records Administration,Washington)

151 Hitler in the ruins of the Reich Chancellery, 1945 (Bibliothek für Zeitgeschichte,Stuttgart)

Glossary of Abbreviations

BVP Bayerische Volkspartei (Bavarian People’s Party)

DAP Deutsche Arbeiterpartei (German Workers’ Party)

DDP Deutsche Demokratische Partei (German Democratic Party)

DNVP Deutschnationale Volkspartei (German National People’s Party)

DSP Deutschsozialistische Partei (German-Socialist Party)

DSVB Deutschvölkische Freiheitsbewegung (German Folkish FreedomMovement)

DVFP Deutschvölkische Freiheitspartei (German Folkish Freedom Party)

DVP Deutsche Volkspartei (German People’s Party)

FHQ Führer Hauptquartier (Führer Headquarters)

KPD Kommunistische Partei Deutschlands (Communist Party of Germany)NSDAP Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei (Nazi Party)

NSFB Nationalsozialistische Freiheitsbewegung (National Socialist FreedomMovement)NSFP Nationalsozialistische Freiheitspartei (National Socialist Freedom Party)NS-Hago Nationalsozialistische Handwerks-, Handels- und Gewerbe-organisation(Nazi Craft, Commerce, and Trade Organization)OKH Oberkommando des Heeres (High Command of the Army)

OKW Oberkommando der Wehrmacht (armed services)

OT Organisation Todt

RSHA Reichssicherheitshauptamt (Reich Security Head Office)

SA Sturmabteilung (Storm Troop)

SD Sicherheitsdienst (Security Service)

SPD Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands (Social Democratic Party ofGermany)

SS Schutzstaffel (lit Protection Squad)

1 The legacy of the First World War

2 Poland under Nazi occupation

3 The Western offensive: the Sichelschnitt attack

4 The German Reich of 1942: the Nazi Party Gaue

5 Nazi occupied Europe

6 Limits of the German occupation of the USSR

7 The Western and Eastern fronts, 1944–5

8 The Soviet drive to Berlin

1 The legacy of the First World War

2 Poland under Nazi occupation

3 The Western offensive: the Sichelschnitt attack

4 The German Reich of 1942: the Nazi Party Gaue

5 Nazi occupied Europe

6 Limits of the German occupation of the USSR

7 The Western and Eastern fronts, 1944–5

8 The Soviet drive to Berlin

Preface to the New Edition

It has been a source of immense satisfaction to me that the original two-volume

biography, Hitler, 1889–1936: Hubris, and Hitler, 1936-1945: Nemesis, published in 1998

and 2000 respectively, was so well received, as also in the numerous countries whereforeign-language editions were published The warm reception in Germany was

particularly gratifying

My biography was above all intended to be a study of Hitler’s power I set out toanswer two questions The first was how Hitler had been possible How could such abizarre misfit ever have been in a position to take power in Germany, a modern,

complex, economically developed, culturally advanced country? The second was how,then, Hitler could exercise power He had great demagogic skills, certainly, and

combined this with a sure eye for exploiting ruthlessly the weakness of his opponents.But he was an unsophisticated autodidact lacking all experience of government From

1933 he had to deal not just with Nazi roughnecks but with a government machine andcircles used to ruling How could he then so swiftly dominate the established politicalélites, go on to draw Germany into a catastrophic high-risk gamble for European

domination with a terrible, unprecedented genocidal programme at its heart, block allpossibilities of a negotiated end to the conflict, and finally kill himself only when thearch-enemy was at his very door and his country physically and morally in total ruins?

I found the answer to these questions only partially in the personality of the strangeindividual who presided over Germany’s fate during those twelve long years Of course,personality counts in historical explanation It would be foolish to suggest otherwise.And Hitler, as those who admired him or reviled him agreed, was an extraordinary

personality (though, however varied and numerous the attempts at explanation are,only speculation is possible on the formative causes of his peculiar psychology) Hitlerwas not interchangeable The type of individual that Hitler was unquestionably

influenced crucial developments in decisive fashion A Reich Chancellor Göring, forinstance, would not have acted in the same way at numerous key junctures It can besaid with certainty: without Hitler, history would have been different

But Hitler’s disastrous impact cannot be explained through personality alone Before

1918, there had been no sign of the later extraordinary personal magnetism He wasseen by those around him as an oddity, at times a figure of mild scorn or ridicule,

definitively not as a future national leader in waiting From 1919 onwards, all this

changed He now became the object of increasing, ultimately almost boundless, massadulation (as well as intense hatred from his political enemies) This in itself suggeststhat the answer to the riddle of his impact has to be found less in Hitler’s personalitythan in the changed circumstances of a German society traumatized by a lost war,

revolutionary upheaval, political instability, economic misery and cultural crisis At anyother time, Hitler would surely have remained a nobody But in those peculiar

circumstances, a symbiotic relationship of dynamic, and ultimately destructive, nature

emerged between the individual with a mission to expunge the perceived national

humiliation of 1918 and a society ready more and more to see his leadership as vital toits future salvation, to rescue it from the dire straits into which, in the eyes of millions ofGermans, defeat, democracy and depression had cast it

To encapsulate this relationship, as the key to understanding how Hitler could obtain,then exercise, his peculiar form of power, I turned to the concept of ‘charismatic

authority’, as devised by the brilliant German sociologist Max Weber, who died beforeHitler had been heard of – at least outside Munich beerhalls I did not elaborate on thisconcept, which had figured prominently in my writing on Hitler and the Third Reichover many years It lay unmistakably, however, at the heart of the inquiry ‘Charismaticauthority’, as deployed by Weber, did not rest primarily on demonstrable outstandingqualities of an individual Rather, it derived from the perception of such qualities among

a ‘following’ which, amid crisis conditions, projected on to a chosen leader unique

‘heroic’ attributes and saw in him personal greatness, the embodiment of a ‘mission’ ofsalvation ‘Charismatic authority’ is, in Weber’s conceptualization, inherently unstable.Continued failure or misfortune will bring its downfall; and it is under threat of

becoming ‘routinized’ into a systematic form of government

Applying this concept of ‘charismatic authority’ seemed to me to offer a useful way oftackling both of the central questions I had posed To my mind, the concept helps inevaluating the relationship between Hitler and the mass following that shaped his rise –though in conditions never, of course, imagined by Max Weber, and where the image of

‘heroic’ leadership attached to Hitler, exploiting pre-existing pseudo-religious

expectations of national salvation, was in good measure a manufactured propagandaproduct And I also found it invaluable in examining the way Hitler’s highly

personalized rule eroded systematic government and administration and was

incompatible with it Of course, by the middle of the war, Hitler’s popularity was insteep decline and any ‘charismatic’ hold over government and society was now waningsharply By this time, however, Germany had been wedded for a decade or so to Hitler’s

‘charismatic’ domination Those who owed their own positions of power to Hitler’s

supreme ‘Führer authority’ still upheld it, whether from conviction or necessity Theyhad risen with Hitler Now they were condemned to fall with him He had left them noway out Hitler’s authority within the regime started to crumble only as Germany facedimminent and total defeat And as long as he lived, he posed an insuperable barrier tothe only way the war he had brought about could be ended: his country’s capitulation

I linked ‘charismatic authority’ to another concept as a way of showing how Hitler’shighly personalized form of rule functioned This, as referred to in the text and

operating as a kind of leitmotiv throughout the biography, was the notion of ‘workingtowards the Führer’, which I tried to use to show how Hitler’s presumed aims served toprompt, activate or legitimate initiatives at different levels of the regime, driving on,consciously or unwittingly, the destructive dynamic of Nazi rule I did not mean, withthis notion, to suggest that people at all times asked themselves what Hitler wantedthen tried to put it into practice Some, of course, especially among the party faithful,

did more or less just that But many others – say in boycotting a Jewish shop to protect

a rival business, or denouncing a neighbour to the police on account of some personalgrievance – were not asking themselves what the Führer’s intentions might be, or

operating from ideological motivation They were, nevertheless, in minor ways, helping

to sustain and promote ideological goals represented by Hitler and thereby indirectlypromoting the process of radicalization by which those goals – in this case, ‘racial

cleansing’ of German society – gradually came more sharply into view as realizable

short-term aims rather than distant objectives

The approach I chose meant the two volumes were necessarily long But even beyondthe text itself there was much to be added I was keen to provide full reference to theextensive documentary sources – both archival and printed primary sources, and thewealth of secondary literature I had used – first, so that other researchers could followthese up and re-examine them if need be, and second to remove distortions in some

accounts or dispose of myths which had attached themselves to Hitler At times, the

notes became in themselves minor excursions on points of detail which could not be

expanded in the text, or offered additional commentary upon it I provided lengthy

notes in Hubris, for example, elaborating on points of interpretation in historiography, and on differing views of Hitler’s psychology; and in Nemesis on the authenticity of the

text of the final ‘table talk’ monologues of early 1945 and on the complex (and

sometimes conflicting) evidence about the circumstances of Hitler’s death and Sovietdiscovery of his remains All of this meant that the two finished volumes became

massive in size, totalling over 1,450 pages of text and almost 450 pages of notes andbibliography Of course, not all readers are able to devote sufficient time and energy to

a work of such length And, naturally, not all readers are interested in the scholarly

apparatus

After much consideration, I decided, therefore, to produce this condensed edition On

undertaking it, I was reminded of the passage in the film Amadeus, where the Kaiser

tells Mozart that he likes his opera – apart from the fact that it contains too many notes

‘Too many notes, Majesty?’ an indignant Mozart interjects ‘There are neither too many,nor too few Just exactly the right number.’ That is more or less how I felt about myoriginal two volumes These took the form and shape that they did because I wanted towrite them in exactly that way So the drastic pruning that has gone into the presentedition – losing over 650 pages (more than 300,000 words) of text and the entire

scholarly apparatus – was nothing if not painful And of course, it goes against the grainfor a historian to produce a text lacking references and scholarly apparatus But I

console myself that the notes and bibliographical references are all there for

consultation by those who want to check them in the full text of the two-volume originalversion, which will remain in print And the abridged text, though greatly shortened tocreate this single, more approachable volume, stays completely true to the original Ihave cut out much which provided context, eliminated numerous illustrative examples,shortened or removed many quotations, and deleted some entire sections which

described the general social and political climate or the setting in which Hitler operated

In two cases, I have blended chapters together Otherwise the structure is identical withthe originals The essence of the book remains completely intact I did not want to, andsaw no need to, change the overall interpretation And, in an exercise devoted to

reducing the size of the text, I naturally did not want to add to its length Apart frominsignificant wording adjustments, I have incorporated only one or two minor

amendments to what I had written earlier Since the original notes have been excluded,there seemed no point in including the lengthy bibliographies in the original two

volumes of works I had used I have, however, provided a selection of the most

important printed primary sources for a biography of Hitler, on all of which (apart from

a couple of recent publications) I drew Most are, of course, in German, though I addwhere relevant a reference to English translations

My many debts of gratitude remain unchanged from the lists of acknowledgements in

Hubris and Nemesis In addition, however, I would like to add my thanks in connection

with this edition to Andrew Wylie, and to Simon Winder and the excellent team at

Penguin It is a great pleasure, finally, to add Olivia to the family roster alongside

Sophie, Joe and Ella, and to thank, as always, David and Katie, Stephen and Becky,and, of course, Betty, for their love and continuing support

Ian Kershaw

Manchester/Sheffield, August 2007

Reflecting on Hitler

Hitler’s dictatorship has the quality of a paradigm for the twentieth century In extremeand intense fashion it reflected, among other things, the total claim of the modern state,unforeseen levels of state repression and violence, previously unparalleled manipulation

of the media to control and mobilize the masses, unprecedented cynicism in

international relations, the acute dangers of ultra-nationalism, and the immensely

destructive power of ideologies of racial superiority and ultimate consequences of

racism, alongside the perverted usage of modern technology and ‘social engineering’.Above all, it lit a warning beacon that still burns brightly: it showed how a modern,

advanced, cultured society can so rapidly sink into barbarity, culminating in ideologicalwar, conquest of scarcely imaginable brutality and rapaciousness, and genocide such asthe world had never previously witnessed Hitler’s dictatorship amounted to the collapse

of modern civilization – a form of nuclear blow-out within modern society It showedwhat we are capable of

The century which, in a sense, his name dominated gained much of its character bywar and genocide – Hitler’s hallmarks What happened under Hitler took place – in fact,could only have taken place – in the society of a modern, cultured, technologically

advanced, and highly bureaucratic country Within only a few years of Hitler becominghead of government, this sophisticated country in the heart of Europe was working

towards what turned out to be an apocalyptic genocidal war that left Germany and

Europe not just riven by an Iron Curtain and physically in ruins, but morally shattered.That still needs explaining The combination of a leadership committed to an ideologicalmission of national regeneration and racial purification; a society with sufficient belief

in its Leader to work towards the goals he appeared to strive for; and a skilled

bureaucratic administration capable of planning and implementing policy, howeverinhumane, and keen to do so, offers a starting-point How and why this society could begalvanized by Hitler requires, even so, detailed examination

It would be convenient to look no further, for the cause of Germany’s and Europe’scalamity, than the person of Adolf Hitler himself, ruler of Germany from 1933 to 1945,whose philosophies of breathtaking inhumanity had been publicly advertised almosteight years before he became Reich Chancellor But, for all Hitler’s prime moral

responsibility for what took place under his authoritarian regime, a personalized

explanation would be a gross short-circuiting of the truth Hitler could be said to provide

a classic illustration of Karl Marx’s dictum that ‘men do make their own history … but …under given and imposed conditions’ How far ‘given and imposed conditions’,

impersonal developments beyond the control of any individual, however powerful,

shaped Germany’s destiny; how much can be put down to contingency, even historicalaccident; what can be attributed to the actions and motivations of the extraordinaryman ruling Germany at the time: all need investigation All form part of the followinginquiry Simple answers are not possible

Since he first entered the limelight in the 1920s, Hitler has been viewed in many

different and varied fashions, often directly contrasting with each other He has beenseen, for example, as no more than ‘an opportunist entirely without principle’, ‘barren

of all ideas save one – the further extension of his own power and that of the nationwith which he had identified himself’, preoccupied solely with ‘domination, dressed up

as the doctrine of race’, and consisting of nothing but ‘vindictive destructiveness’ Incomplete contrast, he has been portrayed as fanatically driving on a pre-planned andpre-ordained ideological programme There have been attempts to see him as a type ofpolitical con-man, hypnotizing and bewitching the German people, leading them astrayand into disaster, or to ‘demonize’ him – turning him into a mystical, inexplicable figure

of Germany’s destiny No less a figure than Albert Speer, Hitler’s architect, then

Armaments Minister, for much of the Third Reich as close to the Dictator as anyone,described him soon after the end of the war as a ‘demonic figure’, ‘one of those

inexplicable historical phenomena which emerge at rare intervals among mankind’,whose ‘person determined the fate of the nation’ Such a view runs the risk of mystifyingwhat happened in Germany between 1933 and 1945, reducing the cause of Germany’sand Europe’s catastrophe to the arbitrary whim of a demonic personality The genesis ofthe calamity finds no explanation outside the actions of an extraordinary individual.Complex developments become no more than an expression of Hitler’s will

An absolutely contrary view – tenable only so long as it was part of a state ideologyand consequently evaporating as soon as the Soviet bloc which had sustained it

collapsed – rejected out of hand any significant role of personality, relegating Hitler to

no more than the status of an agent of capitalism, a cypher for the interests of big

business and its leaders who controlled him and pulled the strings of their marionette.Some accounts of Hitler have scarcely recognized any problem at all of

understanding, or have promptly ruled one out Ridiculing Hitler has been one

approach Describing him simply as a ‘lunatic’ or ‘raving maniac’ obviates the need for

an explanation – though it of course leaves open the key question: why a complex

society would be prepared to follow someone who was mentally deranged, a

‘pathological’ case, into the abyss

Far more sophisticated approaches have clashed on the extent to which Hitler wasactually ‘master in the Third Reich’, or could even be described as ‘in some respects aweak dictator’ Did he in fact exercise total, unrestricted, and sole power? Or did hisregime rest on a hydra-like ‘polycracy’ of power-structures, with Hitler, on account ofhis undeniable popularity and the cult that surrounded him, as its indispensable fulcrumbut little else – remaining no more than the propagandist he had in essence always

been, exploiting opportunities as they came along, though without programme, plan, ordesign?

Differing views about Hitler have never been purely a matter of arcane academicdebate They have wider currency than that – and more far-reaching implications WhenHitler was put forward as a sort of reverse copy of Lenin and Stalin, a leader whoseparanoid fear of Bolshevik terror, of class genocide, motivated him to perpetrate race

genocide, the implications were plain Hitler was wicked, no doubt, but less wicked thanStalin His was the copy, Stalin’s the original The underlying cause of Nazi race

genocide was Soviet class genocide It also mattered when the spotlight was turned

away from the crimes against humanity for which Hitler bears ultimate responsibilityand on to his ruminations on the transformation of German society This Hitler was

interested in social mobility, better housing for workers, modernizing industry, erecting

a welfare system, sweeping away the reactionary privileges of the past; in sum, building

a better, more up-to-date, less class-ridden, German society, however brutal the

methods This Hitler was, despite his demonization of Jews and gamble for world poweragainst mighty odds, ‘a politician whose thinking and actions were far more rationalthan up to now thought’ From such a perspective, Hitler could be seen as wicked, butwith good intentions for German society – or at least intentions which could be viewed

in a positive light

Such revised interpretations were not meant to be apologetic The comparison of Naziand Stalinist crimes against humanity was intended, however distorted the approach, toshed light on the terrible ferocity of ideological conflict in inter-war Europe and the

motive forces of the German genocide The depiction of Hitler as a social-revolutionarywas attempting to explain, perhaps in somewhat misconceived fashion, why he foundsuch wide appeal in Germany in a time of social crisis But it is not hard to see that bothapproaches contain, however unwittingly, the potential for a possible rehabilitation ofHitler which could begin to see him, despite the crimes against humanity associated withhis name, as nevertheless a great leader of the twentieth century, one who, had he diedbefore the war, would have had a high place in the pantheon of German heroes

The question of ‘historical greatness’ was usually implicit in the writing of

conventional biography – particularly so in the German tradition The figure of Hitler,whose personal attributes – distinguished from his political aura and impact – were

scarcely noble, elevating or enriching, posed self-evident problems for such a tradition

A way round it was to imply that Hitler possessed a form of ‘negative greatness’; that,while he lacked the nobility of character and other attributes taken to pertain to

‘greatness’ in historical figures, his impact on history was undeniably immense, even ifcatastrophic Yet ‘negative greatness’ can also be taken to have tragic connotations –mighty endeavour and astounding achievements vitiated; national grandeur turned intonational catastrophe

It seems better to avoid altogether the issue of ‘greatness’ (other than seeking to

understand why so many contemporaries saw ‘greatness’ in Hitler) It is a red-herring:misconstrued, pointless, irrelevant, and potentially apologetic Misconstrued because, as

‘great men’ theories cannot escape doing, it personalizes the historical process in

extreme fashion Pointless because the whole notion of historical greatness is in the lastresort futile Based on a subjective set of moral and even aesthetic judgements, it is aphilosophical-ethical concept which leads nowhere Irrelevant because, whether we were

to answer the question of Hitler’s alleged ‘greatness’ in the affirmative or the negative,

it would in itself explain nothing whatsoever about the terrible history of the Third

Reich And potentially apologetic, because even to pose the question cannot conceal acertain admiration for Hitler, however grudging and whatever his faults; and because,

to look for greatness in Hitler bears the almost automatic corollary of reducing in effectthose who directly promoted his rule, those agencies which sustained it, and the Germanpeople themselves who gave it so much backing, to the role of mere supernumeraries tothe ‘great man’

Rather than the issue of ‘historical greatness’, we need to turn our attention to

another question, one of far greater importance How do we explain how someone with

so few intellectual gifts and social attributes, someone no more than an empty vesseloutside his political life, unapproachable and impenetrable even for those in his closecompany, incapable it seems of genuine friendship, without the background that bredhigh office, without even any experience of government before becoming Reich

Chancellor, could nevertheless have such an immense historical impact, could make theentire world hold its breath?

Perhaps the question is, in part at least, falsely posed For one thing, Hitler was

certainly not unintelligent, and possessed a sharp mind which could draw on his

formidably retentive memory He was able to impress not only, as might be expected,his sycophantic entourage but also cool, critical, seasoned statesmen and diplomats withhis rapid grasp of issues His rhetorical talent was, of course, recognized even by hispolitical enemies And he is certainly not alone among twentieth-century state leaders incombining what we might see as deficiencies of character and shallowness of intellectualdevelopment with notable political skill and effectiveness It is as well to avoid the trap,which most of his contemporaries fell into, of grossly underestimating his abilities

Moreover, others beside Hitler have climbed from humble backgrounds to high office.But if his rise from utter anonymity is not entirely unique, the problem posed by Hitlerremains One reason is the emptiness of the private person He was, as has frequentlybeen said, tantamount to an ‘unperson’ There is, perhaps, an element of conde scension

in this judgement, a readiness to look down on the vulgar, uneducated upstart lacking arounded personality, the outsider with half-baked opinions on everything under the sun,the uncultured self-appointed adjudicator on culture Partly, too, the black hole whichrepresents the private individual derives from the fact that Hitler was highly secretive –not least about his personal life, his background, and his family The secrecy and

detachment were features of his character, applying also to his political behaviour; theywere also politically important, components of the aura of ‘heroic’ leadership he hadconsciously allowed to be built up, intensifying the mystery about himself Even so,

when all qualifications are made, it remains the case that outside politics (and a

blinkered passion for cultural grandeur and power in music, art and architecture)

Hitler’s life was largely a void

A biography of an ‘unperson’, one who has as good as no personal life or history

outside that of the political events in which he is involved, imposes, naturally, its ownlimitations But the drawbacks exist only as long as it is presumed that the private life isdecisive for the public life Such a presumption would be a mistake There was no

‘private life’ for Hitler Of course, he could enjoy his escapist films, his daily walk to theTea House at the Berghof, his time in his alpine idyll far from government ministries inBerlin But these were empty routines There was no retreat to a sphere outside the

political, to a deeper existence which conditioned his public reflexes It was not that his

‘private life’ became part of his public persona On the contrary: so secretive did it

remain that the German people only learned of the existence of Eva Braun once the

Third Reich had crumbled into ashes Rather, Hitler ‘privatized’ the public sphere

‘Private’ and ‘public’ merged completely and became inseparable Hitler’s entire beingcame to be subsumed within the role he played to perfection: the role of ‘Führer’

The task of the biographer at this point becomes clearer It is a task which has to

focus not upon the personality of Hitler, but squarely and directly upon the character of

his power – the power of the Führer.

That power derived only in part from Hitler himself In greater measure, it was a

social product – a creation of social expectations and motivations invested in Hitler byhis followers This does not mean that Hitler’s own actions, in the context of his

expanding power, were not of the utmost importance at key moments But the impact ofhis power has largely to be seen not in any specific attributes of ‘personality’, but in hisrole as Führer – a role made possible only through the underestimation, mistakes,

weakness, and collaboration of others To explain his power, therefore, we must look inthe first instance to others, not to Hitler himself

Hitler’s power was of an extraordinary kind He did not base his claim to power

(except in a most formal sense) on his position as a party leader, or on any functionalposition He derived it from what he saw as his historic mission to save Germany Hispower, in other words, was ‘charismatic’, not institutional It depended upon the

readiness of others to see ‘heroic’ qualities in him And they did see those qualities –

perhaps even before he himself came to believe in them

As one of the most brilliant contemporary analysts of the Nazi phenomenon, FranzNeumann, noted: ‘Charismatic rule has long been neglected and ridiculed, but

apparently it has deep roots and becomes a powerful stimulus once the proper

psychological and social conditions are set The Leader’s charismatic power is not a

mere phantasm – none can doubt that millions believe in it.’ Hitler’s own contribution tothe expansion of this power and to its consequences should not be underrated A briefcounter-factual reflection underlines the point Is it likely, we might ask, that a

terroristic police state such as that which developed under Himmler and the SS wouldhave been erected without Hitler as head of government? Would Germany under a

different leader, even an authoritarian one, have been engaged by the end of the 1930s

in general European war? And would under a different head of state discrimination

against Jews (which would almost certainly have taken place) have culminated in and-out genocide? The answer to each of these questions would surely be ‘no’; or, at thevery least, ‘highly unlikely’ Whatever the external circumstances and impersonal

out-determinants, Hitler was not interchangeable

The highly personalized power which Hitler exercised conditioned even shrewd and

intelligent individuals – churchmen, intellectuals, foreign diplomats, distinguished

visitors – to be impressed by him They would not for the most part have been

captivated by the same sentiments expressed to a raucous crowd in a Munich beerhall.But with the authority of the Reich Chancellorship behind him, backed by adoring

crowds, surrounded by the trappings of power, enveloped by the aura of great

leadership trumpeted by propaganda, it was scarcely surprising that others beyond thecompletely nạve and gullible could find him impressive Power was also the reason whyhis underlings – subordinate Nazi leaders, his personal retinue, provincial party bosses –hung on his every word, before, when that power was at an end in April 1945, fleeinglike the proverbial rats from the sinking ship The mystique of power surely explains,too, why so many women (especially those much younger than he was) saw him, theHitler whose person seems to us the antithesis of sexuality, as a sex-symbol, several

attempting suicide on his behalf

A history of Hitler has to be, therefore, a history of his power – how he came to get it,what its character was, how he exercised it, why he was allowed to expand it to breakall institutional barriers, why resistance to that power was so feeble But these are

questions to be directed at German society, not just at Hitler

There is no necessity to play down the contribution to Hitler’s gaining and exercise ofpower that derived from the ingrained features of his character Single-mindedness,

inflexibility, ruthlessness in discarding all hindrances, cynical adroitness, the

all-or-nothing gambler’s instinct for the highest stakes: each of these helped shape the nature

of his power These features of character came together in one overriding element inHitler’s inner drive: his boundless egomania Power was Hitler’s aphrodisiac For one asnarcissistic as he was, it offered purpose out of purposeless early years, compensationfor all the deeply felt setbacks of the first half of his life – rejection as an artist, socialbankruptcy taking him to a Viennese doss-house, the falling apart of his world in thedefeat and revolution of 1918 Power was all-consuming for him As one perceptive

observer commented in 1940, even before the triumph over France: ‘Hitler is the

potential suicide par excellence He owns no ties outside his own “ego” … He is in the

privileged position of one who loves nothing and no one but himself … So he can dareall to preserve or magnify his power … which alone stands between him and speedydeath.’ The thirst for personalized power of such magnitude embraced an insatiable

appetite for territorial conquest amounting to an almighty gamble – against extremelyheavy odds – for a monopoly of power on the European continent and, later, world

power The relentless quest for ever greater expansion of power could contemplate nodiminution, no confinement, no restriction It was, moreover, dependent upon the

continuance of what were taken to be ‘great achievements’ Lacking any capacity forlimitation, the progressive megalomania inevitably contained the seeds of self-

destruction for the regime Hitler led The match with his own inbuilt suicidal tendencieswas perfect

All-consuming though power was for Hitler, it was not a matter of power for its ownsake, devoid of content or meaning Hitler was not just a propagandist, a manipulator,

a mobilizer He was all those But he was also an ideologue of unshakeable convictions –the most radical of the radicals as exponent of an internally coherent (however

repellent to us) ‘world-view’, acquiring its thrust and potency from its combination of avery few basic ideas – integrated by the notion of human history as the history of racialstruggle His ‘world-view’ gave him a rounded explanation of the ills of Germany and ofthe world, and how to remedy them He held to his ‘world-view’ unwaveringly from theearly 1920s down to his death in the bunker It amounted to a utopian vision of nationalredemption, not a set of middle-range policies But it was not only capable of

incorporating within it all the different strands of Nazi philosophy; combined with

Hitler’s rhetorical skills, it also meant that he soon became practically unchallengeable

on any point of party doctrine

Hitler’s ideological goals, his actions, and his personal input into the shaping of

events need, then, to be accorded the most serious attention But they explain far fromeverything What Hitler did not do, did not instigate, but which was nevertheless set intrain by the initiatives of others is as vital as the actions of the Dictator himself in

understanding the fateful ‘cumulative radicalization’ of the regime

An approach which looks to the expectations and motivations of German society (inall its complexity) more than to Hitler’s personality in explaining the Dictator’s immenseimpact offers the potential to explore the expansion of his power through the internaldynamics of the regime he headed and the forces he unleashed The approach is

encapsulated in the maxim enunciated by a Nazi functionary in 1934 – providing in asense a leitmotiv for the work as a whole – that it was the duty of each person in theThird Reich ‘to work towards the Führer along the lines he would wish’ without awaitinginstruction from above This maxim, put into practice, was one of the driving-forces ofthe Third Reich, translating Hitler’s loosely framed ideological goals into reality throughinitiatives focused on working towards the fulfilment of the Dictator’s visionary aims.Hitler’s authority was, of course, decisive But the initiatives which he sanctioned

derived more often than not from others

Hitler was no tyrant imposed on Germany Though he never attained majority

support in free elections, he was legally appointed to power as Reich Chancellor justlike his predecessors had been, and became between 1933 and 1940 arguably the mostpopular head of state in the world Understanding this demands reconciling the

apparently irreconcilable: the personalized method of biography and the contrastingapproaches to the history of society (including the structures of political domination).Hitler’s impact can only be grasped through the era which created him (and was

destroyed by him) An interpretation must not only take full account of Hitler’s

ideological goals, his actions, and his personal input into the shaping of events; it must

at the same time locate these within the social forces and political structures which

permitted, shaped, and promoted the growth of a system that came increasingly to

hinge on personalized, absolute power – with the disastrous effects that flowed from it.The Nazi assault on the roots of civilization was a defining feature of the twentiethcentury Hitler was the epicentre of that assault But he was its chief exponent, not its

prime cause.

1 Fantasy and Failure

IThe first of many strokes of good fortune for Adolf Hitler took place thirteen years

before he was born In 1876, the man who was to become his father changed his namefrom Alois Schicklgruber to Alois Hitler Adolf can be believed when he said that nothinghis father had done had pleased him so much as to drop the coarsely rustic name of

Schicklgruber Certainly, ‘Heil Schicklgruber’ would have sounded an unlikely salutation

to a national hero

The Schicklgrubers had for generations been a peasant family, smallholders in theWaldviertel, a picturesque but poor, hilly and (as the name suggests) woody area in themost north-westerly part of Lower Austria, bordering on Bohemia, whose inhabitantshad something of a reputation for being dour, hard-nosed, and unwelcoming Hitler’sfather, Alois, had been born there on 7 June 1837, in the village of Strones, as the

illegitimate child of Maria Anna Schicklgruber, then forty-one years old and daughter of

a poor smallholder, Johann Schicklgruber, and baptized (as Aloys Schicklgruber) in

nearby Döllersheim the same day

Hitler’s father was the first social climber in his family In 1855, by the time he waseighteen, Alois had gained employment at a modest grade with the Austrian ministry offinance For a young man of his background and limited education, his advancement inthe years to come was impressive After training, and passing the necessary

examination, he attained low-ranking supervisory status in 1861 and a position in thecustoms service in 1864, becoming a customs officer in 1870 before moving the

following year to Braunau am Inn, and attaining the post of customs inspector there in1875

A year later came the change of name Alois, the social climber, may have preferredthe less rustic form of ‘Hitler’ (a variant spelling of ‘Hiedler’, otherwise given as

‘Hietler’, Hüttler’, ‘Hütler’, meaning ‘smallholder’, the surname of Johann Georg Hiedler,who had later married Alois’s mother, apparently acknowledging paternity) At anyrate, Alois seemed well satisfied with his new name, and from the final authorization inJanuary 1877 always signed himself ‘Alois Hitler’ His son was equally pleased with themore distinctive form ‘Hitler’

Klara Pölzl, who was to become Adolf Hitler’s mother, was the eldest of only threesurviving children out of eleven – the other two were Johanna and Theresia – from themarriage of Johanna Hüttler, eldest daughter of Johann Nepomuk Hüttler, with JohannBaptist Pölzl, also a smallholder in Spital Klara herself grew up on the adjacent farm tothat of her grandfather Nepomuk At the death of his brother, Johann Georg Hiedler,

Nepomuk had effectively adopted Alois Schicklgruber Klara’s mother, Johanna, and heraunt Walburga had in fact been brought up with Alois in Nepomuk’s house Officially,after the change of name and legitimation in 1876, Alois Hitler and Klara Pölzl weresecond cousins In that year, 1876, aged sixteen, Klara Pölzl left the family farm in

Spital and moved to Braunau am Inn to join the household of Alois Hitler as a maid

By this time, Alois was a well-respected customs official in Braunau His personal

affairs were, however, less well regulated than his career He would eventually marrythree times, at first to a woman much older than himself, Anna Glasserl, from whom heseparated in 1880, then to women young enough to be his daughters A premarital

liaison and his last two marriages would give him nine children, four of whom were todie in infancy It was a private life of above average turbulence – at least for a

provincial customs officer When his second wife, Franziska (Fanni) Matzelberger, died

of tuberculosis in August 1884 aged only twenty-three, their two children, Alois andAngela, were still tiny During her illness, Fanni had been moved to the fresh air of thecountryside outside Braunau For someone to look after his two young children, Aloisturned straight away to Klara Pölzl, and brought her back to Braunau With Fanni

scarcely in her grave, Klara became pregnant Since they were officially second cousins,

a marriage between Alois and Klara needed the dispensation of the Church After a wait

of four months, in which Klara’s condition became all the more evident, the dispensationfinally arrived from Rome in late 1884, and the couple were married on 7 January

1885 The wedding ceremony took place at six o’clock in the morning Soon after a

perfunctory celebration, Alois was back at his work at the customs post

The first of the children of Alois’s third marriage, Gustav, was born in May 1885, to

be followed in September the following year by a second child, Ida, and, with scarcely arespite, by another son, Otto, who died only days after his birth Further tragedy forKlara came soon afterwards, as both Gustav and Ida contracted diphtheria and diedwithin weeks of each other in December 1887 and January 1888 By the summer of 1888Klara was pregnant again At half-past six in the evening on 20 April 1889, an overcastand chilly Easter Saturday, she gave birth in her home in the ‘Gasthof zum Pommer’,Vorstadt Nr.219, to her fourth child, the first to survive infancy: this was Adolf

The historical record of Adolf ’s early years is very sparse His own account in Mein

Kampf is inaccurate in detail and coloured in interpretation Post-war recollections of

family and acquaintances have to be treated with care, and are at times as dubious asthe attempts during the Third Reich itself to glorify the childhood of the future Führer.For the formative period so important to psychologists and ‘psycho-historians’, the facthas to be faced that there is little to go on which is not retrospective guesswork

By the time of Adolf ’s birth, Alois was a man of moderate means His income was asolid one – rather more than that of an elementary school headmaster In addition toAlois, Klara, the two children of Alois’s second marriage, Alois Jr (before he left home in1896) and Angela, Adolf, and his younger brother Edmund (born in 1894, but died in1900) and sister Paula (born in 1896), the household also ran to a cook and maid,

Rosalia Schichtl In addition, there was Adolf ’s aunt Johanna, one of his mother’s

younger sisters, a bad-tempered, hunchbacked woman who was, however, fond of Adolfand a good help for Klara around the house In material terms, then, the Hitler familyled a comfortable middle-class existence.

Family life was, however, less than harmonious and happy Alois was an archetypalprovincial civil servant – pompous, status-proud, strict, humourless, frugal, pedanticallypunctual, and devoted to duty He was regarded with respect by the local community.But he had a bad temper which could flare up quite unpredictably At home, Alois was

an authoritarian, overbearing, domineering husband and a stern, distant, masterful, andoften irritable father For long after their marriage, Klara could not get out of the habit

of calling him ‘Uncle’ And even after his death, she kept a rack of his pipes in the

kitchen and would point to them on occasion when he was referred to, as if to invokehis authority

What affection the young children missed in their father was more than recompensed

by their mother According to the description given much later by her Jewish doctor,Eduard Bloch, after his own forced emigration from Nazi Germany, Klara Hitler was ‘asimple, modest, kindly woman She was tall, had brownish hair which she kept neatlyplaited, and a long, oval face with beautifully expressive grey-blue eyes.’ In personality,she was submissive, retiring, quiet, a pious churchgoer, taken up in the running of thehousehold, and above all absorbed in the care of her children and stepchildren The

deaths within weeks of each other of her first three children in infancy in 1887–8, andthe subsequent death of her fifth child, Edmund, under the age of six in 1900, must havebeen hammer blows for her Her sorrows can only have been compounded by livingwith an irascible, unfeeling, overbearing husband It is scarcely surprising that she made

an impression of a saddened, careworn woman Nor is it any wonder that she bestowed

a smothering, protective love and devotion on her two surviving children, Adolf andPaula Klara was in turn held in love and affection by her children and stepchildren, byAdolf quite especially ‘Outwardly, his love for his mother was his most striking feature,’

Dr Bloch later wrote ‘While he was not a “mother’s boy” in the usual sense,’ he added, ‘Ihave never witnessed a closer attachment.’ In one of the few signs of human affection

recorded in Mein Kampf, Adolf wrote, ‘I had honoured my father, but loved my mother.’

He carried her picture with him down to the last days in the bunker Her portrait stood

in his rooms in Munich, Berlin, and at the Obersalzberg (his alpine residence near

Berchtesgaden) His mother may well, in fact, have been the only person he genuinelyloved in his entire life

Adolf ’s early years were spent, then, under the suffocating shield of an over-anxiousmother in a household dominated by the threatening presence of a disciplinarian father,against whose wrath the submissive Klara was helpless to protect her offspring Adolf ’syounger sister, Paula, spoke after the war of her mother as ‘a very soft and tender

person, the compensatory element between the almost too harsh father and the verylively children who were perhaps somewhat difficult to train If there were ever

quarrel[s] or differences of opinion between my parents,’ she continued, ‘it was always

on account of the children It was especially my brother Adolf who challenged my father

to extreme harshness and who got his sound thrashing every day … How often on theother hand did my mother caress him and try to obtain with her kindness what the

father could not succeed [in obtaining] with harshness!’ Hitler himself, during his night fireside monologues in the 1940s, often recounted that his father had sudden

late-bursts of temper and would then immediately hit out He did not love his father, he said,but instead feared him all the more His poor beloved mother, he used to remark, to

whom he was so attached, lived in constant concern about the beatings he had to take,sometimes waiting outside the door as he was thrashed

Quite possibly, Alois’s violence was also turned against his wife A passage in Mein

Kampf, in which Hitler ostensibly describes the conditions in a workers’ family where the

children have to witness drunken beatings of their mother by their father, may well

have drawn in part on his own childhood experiences What the legacy of all this wasfor the way Adolf’s character developed must remain a matter for speculation That itsimpact was profound is hard to doubt

Beneath the surface, the later Hitler was unquestionably being formed Speculationthough it must remain, it takes little to imagine that his later patronizing contempt forthe submissiveness of women, the thirst for dominance (and imagery of the Leader asstern, authoritarian father-figure), the inability to form deep personal relationships, thecorresponding cold brutality towards humankind, and – not least – the capacity for

hatred so profound that it must have reflected an immeasurable undercurrent of hatred concealed in the extreme narcissism that was its counterpoint must surely havehad roots in the subliminal influences of the young Adolf ’s family circumstances Butassumptions have to remain guesswork The outer traces of Adolf ’s early life, so far asthey can be reconstructed, bear no hint of what would emerge Attempts to find in theyoungster ‘the warped person within the murderous dictator’ have proved unpersuasive

self-If we exclude our knowledge of what was to come, his family circumstances invoke forthe most part sympathy for the child exposed to them

IIAlois Hitler had always been a restless soul The Hitlers had moved house several timeswithin Braunau, and had subsequently been uprooted on a number of occasions In

November 1898, a final move for Alois took place when he bought a house with a smallplot of attached land in Leonding, a village on the outskirts of Linz From now on, thefamily settled in the Linz area, and Adolf – down to his days in the bunker in 1945 –looked upon Linz as his home town Linz reminded him of the happy, carefree days ofhis youth It held associations with his mother And it was the most ‘German’ town of theAustrian Empire It evidently symbolized for him the provincial small-town Germanicidyll – the image he would throughout his life set against the city he would soon come toknow, and detest: Vienna

Adolf was now in his third elementary school He seems to have established himself

rapidly with a new set of schoolmates, and became ‘a little ringleader’ in the games ofcops and robbers which the village boys played in the woods and fields around theirhomes War games were a particular favourite Adolf himself was thrilled by an

illustrated history of the Franco-Prussian War, which he had come across at home Andonce the Boer War broke out, the games revolved around the heroic exploits of the

Boers, whom the village boys fervently supported About this same time, Adolf becamegripped by the adventure stories of Karl May, whose popular tales of the Wild West andIndian wars (though May had never been to America) enthralled thousands of

youngsters Most of these youngsters graduated from the Karl May adventures and thechildhood fantasies they fostered as they grew up For Adolf, however, the fascinationwith Karl May never faded As Reich Chancellor, he still read the May stories,

recommending them, too, to his generals, whom he accused of lacking imagination

Adolf later referred to ‘this happy time’, when ‘school work was ridiculously easy,leaving me so much free time that the sun saw more of me than my room’, when

‘meadows and woods were then the battleground on which the ever-present

“antagonisms” ’ – the growing conflict with his father – ‘came to a head’

In 1900, however, the carefree days were drawing to a close And just around thetime when important decisions had to be made about Adolf ’s future, and the secondaryeducation path he should follow, the Hitler family was once more plunged into distresswith the death, through measles, of Adolf ’s little brother Edmund on 2 February 1900.With Alois’s elder son, Alois Jr, already spiting his father and living away from home,any careerist ambitions for his offspring now rested upon Adolf They were to lead totension between father and son in the remaining years of Alois’s life

Adolf began his secondary schooling on 17 September 1900 His father had opted for

the Realschule rather than the Gymnasium, that is, for a school which attached less

weight to the traditional classical and humanistic studies but was still seen as a

preparation for higher education, with an emphasis upon more ‘modern’ subjects,

including science and technical studies According to Adolf, his father was influenced bythe aptitude his son already showed for drawing, together with a disdain for the

impracticality of humanistic studies deriving from his own hard way to career

advancement It was not the typical route for a would-be civil servant – the career

which Alois had in mind for his son But, then, Alois himself had made a good career inthe service of the Austrian state with hardly any formal education at all to speak of

The transition to secondary school was a hard one for young Adolf He had to trekevery day from his home in Leonding to school in Linz, a journey of over an hour eachway, leaving him little or no time for developing out-of-school friendships While he wasstill a big fish in a little pond among the village boys in Leonding, his classmates in hisnew school took no special notice of him He had no close friends at school; nor did heseek any And the attention he had received from his village teacher was now replaced

by the more impersonal treatment of a number of teachers responsible for individualsubjects The minimum effort with which Adolf had mastered the demands of the

primary school now no longer sufficed His school work, which had been so good in

primary school, suffered from the outset And his behaviour betrayed clear signs of

immaturity Adolf’s school record, down to the time he left in autumn 1905, hoveredbetween poor and mediocre

In a letter to Hitler’s defence counsel on 12 December 1923, following the failed

putsch attempt in Munich, his former class teacher, Dr Eduard Huemer, recalled Adolf as

a thin, pale youth commuting between Linz and Leonding, a boy not making full use ofhis talent, lacking in application, and unable to accommodate himself to school

discipline He characterized him as stubborn, high-handed, dogmatic, and hot-tempered.Strictures from his teachers were received with a scarcely concealed insolence With hisclassmates he was domineering, and a leading figure in the sort of immature prankswhich Huemer attributed to too great an addiction to Karl May’s Indian stories togetherwith a tendency to waste time furthered by the daily trip from Leonding and back

There can be little doubting that Hitler’s attitude towards his school and teachers

(with one exception) was scathingly negative He left school ‘with an elemental hatred’towards it, and later mocked and derided his schooling and teachers Only his history

teacher, Dr Leopold Pötsch, was singled out for praise in Mein Kampf for firing Hitler’s

interest through vivid narratives and tales of heroism from the German past, stirring inhim the strongly emotional German-nationalist, anti-Habsburg feelings (which were inany case widely prevalent in his school, as in Linz generally)

The problems of adjustment that Adolf encountered in the Realschule in Linz were

compounded by the deterioration in relations with his father and the running sore of thedisputes over the boy’s future career For Alois, the virtues of a civil service career couldnot be gainsaid But all his attempts to enthuse his son met with adamant rejection ‘Iyawned and grew sick to my stomach at the thought of sitting in an office, deprived of

my liberty; ceasing to be master of my own time,’ wrote Adolf in Mein Kampf.

The more Adolf resisted the idea, the more authoritarian and insistent his father

became Equally stubborn, when asked what he envisaged for his future, Adolf claimed

he replied that he wanted to be an artist – a vision which for the dour Austrian civilservant Alois was quite unthinkable ‘Artist, no, never as long as I live!’, Hitler has himsaying Whether the young Adolf, allegedly at the age of twelve, so plainly stipulated hewanted to be an artist may be doubted But that there was a conflict with his father

arising from his unwillingness to follow a career in the civil service, and that his fatherfound fault with his son’s indolent and purposeless existence, in which drawing

appeared to be his main interest, seems certain Alois had worked his way up throughindustry, diligence, and effort from humble origins to a position of dignity and respect

in the state service His son, from a more privileged background, saw fit to do no morethan dawdle away his time drawing and dreaming, would not apply himself in school,had no career path in view, and scorned the type of career which had meant everything

to his father The dispute amounted, therefore, to more than a rejection of a civil servicecareer It was a rejection of everything his father had stood for; and with that, a

rejection of his father himself

Adolf’s adolescence, as he commented in Mein Kampf, was ‘very painful’ With the